Light airs set tone at start of Cork Week

SAILING: The principal theme of light airs for the summer sailing season continued at Cork Week yesterday as near-calm conditions once again set the pace, or rather lack of it, for the 500 competing yachts at the start of the five-day series.

The expected running order in Class Super Zero was turned on its head by the unwanted calm, and the 100-footer Maximus ended second from last while the British Transpac 52-footer Panthera took the honours for the day.

Maximus also suffered the indignity of running aground at the entrance to the Owenbue River towards low water, though it has to be acknowledged that touching the bottom at Crosshaven is far from an irregular occurrence

Running with plenty of recent light-airs practice, Irish crews from the recent Rolex Commodore's Cup in Cowes fared well on home waters yesterday.

Colm Barrington's Magic Glove headed the 16-strong Class Zero with a six-minute lead on the water plus corrected time in what could prove to be the start of his hallmark slam-dunk for the series.

Conor and Denise Phelan's Jump Juice went head to head with Dave Dwyer's marinerscove.ie to emerge on top in Class One, where a healthy 29-boat turnout took to the sea off Roche's Point.

Nevertheless, fleet numbers are considerably down at Cork Week 2006, far lower at 402 boats than the capped 550 boats in 2004.

Meanwhile, among the production boat "one-designs", Andrew Allen and Colm Monahan's No Naked Flames leads the J109 against 21 other boats thanks to the fine seven-minute cushion they built up yesterday.

Cork Week will be hoping the forecast 10-knot breeze comes good today to permit the full programme of two races per day. Just legs of one course constituted a race for most of the fleet yesterday.

The consolation for Cork is that it is not the first event this season to suffer from a lack of wind. The BMW Round Ireland Race was one of the lightest on record just 10 days ago, while the Commodore's Cup was sailed in mostly light airs and decided by a near calm on the final race three weeks ago.

Organisers point to the bigger overall size of entries, more international fleet, including five new countries, and the earlier start to Cowes Week this year for the smaller entry.

The drop will also please some people who have found crowds of 10,000 per day in previous events too much for comfort.